Category: Spring in Minnesota

And the winner is …

The winner of the first “green” spotted in the gardens at the townhouse is …

a sedum!

More to come.

70s ahead.

The amur maple and broken off limb are still sitting in the front yard 😂 The birds and squirrels have been seen sitting around the broken off branch – easy seed eatings, right?

A volunteer opportunity came along today, for the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. (Angels sing)

Sooooooo tempted!!! It is even one of those opportunities where I can use my 16 hours of paid volunteer time through work! (That’s how I heard about it 🙂 ) The date listed right now is smack dab in the middle of a busy work week next week though. Still sooooo tempted. To be even a tiny part of that glorious place and love on the plants and be around others who love it and share and learn from and with them? (angels sing again!) Please believe me when I say I love and have loved that place since the kids were very young and we lived 10 minutes away and took them there to exhaust them – lol. Work events there, church events there, anniversaries there. And oh how it has grown! Contemplating. Seriously contemplating. Last time we were there I was actually jealous of the people weeding and working with the plants! It is just quite a drive now to get there. But still contemplating.

Did I say I am SERIOUSLY contemplating? Maybe a Saturday thing.

Almost (Spring 2023)

Oh boy! Where do we start? I do indeed love our seasons, but this year, in my humble opinion, has been a very long winter. It probably doesn’t help that we took our first ever planned warm weather actual vacation this year, and I still have “beach” on my mind. But alas, beach gardening is not a thing, I don’t think, so no plans to move just yet 😉

I like to say I am a “Thursday” sort of girl – the whole (weekend) yet ahead, but right … almost … there … I feel that way right now. The snow is melting, and I do see the grass and garden emerging. I suppose in July I will miss all this snow. But for now, sooooo done with this view.

Couldn’t resist

After an intense work day yesterday I sat out on the patio with my husband. As we relaxed, and I looked out over the back garden, the tree seedlings got to me. And two in particular were really getting to my husband. They were getting to him because he is used to my gardening habit of keeping the tree seedlings out of the rock, they were getting quite tall, and I was saying not to pull them. Quite tall for tree seedlings in the rock is over 4″ – lol. The two tall seedlings were from the cherry trees around the neighborhood. I was deliberating trying to transplant them and see if they survived.

After sitting for a while, I couldn’t resist. The hundreds of tree seedlings fell prey to the start of my annual ” next steps” cadence. Despite my intentions to leave them until the roof/gutter/fascia work here is done, the gardener in me was sad. The garden looked sad. So, I went and got my weeding bucket and started the clean-up.

I have shared my experience that gardening is excellent exercise. I must have REALLY needed that yesterday.

Today unofficial summer starts here. It feels good. And more normal. There is no construction noise. The nature sounds are the backdrop to a beautiful morning. A little thunder in the distance. Ahhhhh.

Next week the roof project turns the corner to our area, and it will be increasingly noisy as we are kind of in the middle of the remainder. But that can be dealt with by filling up the gas tank and heading north. For this morning, when the rain finishes up, I think I will get out and fill another bucket with tree seedlings. That would be bucket 2 of the usual 7. Everything in moderation 🙂

The shamrocks and the birds

This past weekend I finally felt comfortable putting the shamrock plants out. The are kind of a fixture in the summer garden. The purple one especially draws the eye all the way to the end of the linden garden area.

Since we live in Minnesota, the shamrocks make their late fall to mid-spring home indoors. The night-time temperatures need to be around 40°F outdoors before they can go out in the spring. This year that was late. But they are out now, and the cycle for spring shamrock cleanup has begun. You see, every spring when I finally feel comfortable putting the shamrocks out, I am happy, and sad. Happy because the mat of dead stems that is hard to clear amongst the fragile live stems gets kind of “ugly” by May, and sad because the beautiful live shamrocks will get windblown, die back, and then take a few weeks to get their summer “coat”.

The wonderful part is what I saw first hand today as a robin flew back and forth between the purple shamrock and a nearby pine tree, plucking first big sections of the dead stem mat, and then finishing by plucking tangled remaining dead stems. It happens every year. And it makes my gardener/bird lover heart smile.

Can you see the robin? Another sat nearby and flew right behind over to the new nest location. I am assuming that is one of the pairs we saw “mating” in the past week.

Oh boy!

Here it comes – the best garden planting time of the year, some planned time off work, and ideas floating around in my mind.

The ideas mostly involve dividing hostas, but those are all really slow to show this year.

So far the daylilies and sedum have won the race over the hostas to begin to dot the garden with that fabulous color of spring green.